Friday, 26 October 2012

Barry Big Balls! (And the Resurrection of GOP Scare Tactics)

After owning up to his meager initial performance, Barack Obama not only turned
up, but was back on form for the remaining Presidential debates. Perhaps
remembering that substance is worthless without style, the President mounted a
strong offensive, giving us viewers what we really want –good television.

Romney, perhaps mistaking a flash-in-the-pan-performance for
inherent talent, looked frazzled during the debates, apparently flummoxed by a
participating Obama. Nor did it help Romney that Obama happened to be familiar
with the former’s strong belief in the malleability of facts. For instance,
when Romney touted the merits of a bipartisan
law that bolstered education in Massachusetts, the President quickly
reminded him that that law was, in fact, passed in 1993—10 years before Romney
took office.

Romney’s campaign,
since the early days of the GOP primaries, has been based on making a negative
case against Obama. After a decade of war, five years of recession, and a
stultified government, change has positioned itself as a stubborn fad in
America. So, why not just appropriate the 2008 Obama strategy, lambaste the
status quo and espouse change again?

Here are a few
reasons why the change routine isn’t as suitable in 2012. Under the W
administration we waged two wars, one of which was based on fabricated
evidence. (If that’s debatable, then let’s agree to say it was based on gross
incompetence, shorn up by an administration comprised of homogenous thinkers). We
also saw tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while government spending rose
dramatically, quickly transforming the surplus from the Clinton years in to a
deficit. Moreover, continued deregulation in the financial sector precipitated
the worst recession since the 1930s, which now requires comprehensive
structural reform—something which we have barely begun. The Dow sunk to the low
8000s, signifying diminished investor confidence in US markets. And nevermind
the fact that the W administration destroyed the American brand and tarnished
our reputation.

Did we need change?
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that we did.

Four years later,
the recurring Republican refrain--meant to dismiss Obama with one fell
swoop--has been to implore Americans to ask themselves one simple question: are
you better off than you were four years ago? Presumably, the GOP is expecting
voters to answer in the negative. Is that expectation warranted?

Well, the Dow in up
62% since the day Obama took office. It’s up 97% from its March 2009 low—two
months after Obama was inaugurated. We’ve withdrawn from Iraq and are
winding down in Afghanistan. More jobs are being created now than at any point
since 2008. Obamacare has been passed and the US will join every other
developed country in offering its citizens, even the least well-off, reasonable
healthcare. (By the way, compare the GOP rhetoric toward Obamacare to the early GOP rhetoric toward Social Security).

But Obamacare is a
socialist anathema and only benefits freeloaders and satan worshippers, right?
Allow me recount a personal tale. A few days before the dental tranche of
Obamacare kicked in, I was quoted between $800 and $1000 to have my (very
painful) impacted wisdom teeth extracted. That figure, by the way, is per tooth.
After Obamacare, I paid a $35 co-pay. Was I one of Paul Ryan’s unemployed
ne’er-do-well "takers"? Well, I was between my Bachelor and Masters
degree, during which time I was not classified as a student. As a result, I was no longer applicable for my current insurance plan. I guess I was a
self absorbed taker then.

So are we better
off? You’re damn right we’re better off. At the end of 2008 the prospect of
living like Tusken Raiders seemed very real. How has that slipped from our
memories so quickly?

Romney’s strategy
is clear. Espouse, utilize and beat the American people to death with straw man
arguments. Make a negative case for Obama. Make sure they hate him so much that
they go with the lesser of two evils. At least Romney’s valuation of himself is
fair.

There is another
curious logical fallacy at play in the Romney strategy—the old argumentum
verbosum routine. Eh hem? It took me a while to find this gem:
“a rhetorical technique that tries to persuade by overwhelming those
considering an argument with such a volume of material that the argument sounds
plausible, superficially appears to be well-researched, and it is so laborious
to untangle and check supporting facts that the argument might be allowed to
slide by unchallenged.” John Kerry also jabbed Romney for this, referring to him as
the Wikipedia candidate, presumably due to Romney’s penchant for constantly throwing
out a jumble of information, a good amount of which is incorrect. I think this
comparison is unfair to Wikipedia.

The highlight of
the final Presidential debate was, of course, the Obama zinger that is
tsunami-ing through Twitter. Aaron Sorkin himself couldn’t have written a
better come-back. However, the President’s “horses and bayonets” quote--which
by the way has seriously upset the bayonet lobby--perhaps overshadowed the dark
alley down which Romney has apparently insisted on taking us…again.

GOP fear
mongering is back. Here’s what Romney said to prompt to the H&B quip.

“Our Navy is
smaller than it's been since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry
out their mission. We’re now down to 285. We’re heading down to the low two-hundreds
if we go down to sequestration. That’s unacceptable to me. I want to make sure
that we have the ships that are required by our navy. Our Air Force is older
and smaller than any time since it was founded in 1947. Since FDR we’ve always
had the strategy that we could fight in two conflicts at once. Now we’re
changing to one conflict. This in my view is the highest responsibility of the
President of the United States, which is to maintain the safety of the American
people. And I will not cut our military budget by $1 trillion…that in my view
is making our future less certain and less secure.”

Counting the number of
ships or aircraft is not a good measurement of defense strength because their
capabilities have increased dramatically in recent decades.

- William W. Stueck, a
historian at the University of Georgia

Although the overall
force level is lower, the capabilities of the current force in almost all
respects far exceed that of the huge Air Force of the 1950s.

- Ruehrmund and Bowie, in an article
published by the Mitchell Institute, a research and analysis organization
founded by the Air Force Association.

It took dozens of planes
and literally hundreds of bombs to destroy a single target because they were so
inaccurate. Thanks to smart bombs and stealthy aircraft, today it only takes a
single plane and often a single bomb to destroy a target.

- Todd Harrison, a fellow
with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

The vast superiority of the U.S. Air Force has
little to do with number of planes, but with vastly superior training,
in-flight coordination and control, as well as precision targeting and superior
missiles

- Charles Knight,
co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives at the Massachusetts-based
Commonwealth Institute

However, these
facts don’t suit Romney’s cause. So he ignores them, stating: “we simply cannot
continue to cut our Department of Defense budget if we are going to remain the
hope of the Earth. And I will fight to make sure America retains military
superiority."

Hmm. I wonder if
America is really in jeopardy of losing its military superiority. Instead of
filibustering this one, I decided to make some charts from the figures compiled
by SIPRI regarding military expenditure for 2012:

By the way, most of
these countries are our allies.

The guys who we are
at war with have attacked us with box cutters, shoe bombs and underwear bombs.
Of course more sophisticated weaponry is being used in the Middle East. But will
increasing our military expenditure by $1 trillion over 10 years really have
any marginal utility when it comes to fighting these combatants?

The fear mongering
is back. The GOP can’t win on merit, so they will try win on fear. There is no
strategy more despicable.